Chaitya

Chaitya

the name for various sacred objects in India. In art history, the term is usually used in reference to an architectural type characteristic of Buddhist architecture in ancient and medieval India. It consists of an elongated cave cut into a cliff, with a vaulted ceiling and a stupa in the back as an object of worship.

The symbols of the twelve animals of Sino-Tibetan astrology carved in stone slabs and attached to the pedestal of the huge gilt bronze Vajra at Svayambhu Chaitya are the evidences of this astrological system related to the Newar cultural tradition.

Since Shivaji Park is near Chaitya Bhoomi, where the last rites of Ambedkar were conducted, a sea people start pouring in a day earlier at the park where the civic administration provides all basic facilities like tents, drinking water, medical stalls and mobile toilets.

Vajracharya proposed that present-day Bauddhanath is identical with Shivadevavihara because the Gopalarajavamshavali states that the Licchavi king Shivadeva founded Khasau Chaitya, the ancient Newari name for Bauddhanath.

Starting with an early chaitya hall (Cave 4), probably dating to the end of the 1st century CE (figure 1), on the basis of carefully explored historical and stylistic connections, it progresses to a small cluster of late 5th-century caves (Caves 1, 3, 4A) near the old hall.

The keywords for the ritual practices are vandana (salutation), paricharaka (walking about), and mahas (celebration), and the general word for a ritual place is chaitya (shrine), all lying at the root of the Buddhist idea of "sites of memory".

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